Tuesday, January 09, 2018

Alan Dershowitz: The Left is borrowing tactics from the old Soviet Union...

"The left is borrowing tactics from the old Soviet Union in an attempt to bring down President Trump, contends Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz.

In an interview with 'Fox & Friends,' Dershowitz said the charge that Trump is mentally unstable and should be removed from office is similar to what communist leaders during the Cold War did to political dissidents he represented.

'There’s only one thing worse than trying to criminalize political differences, and that’s trying to psychiatrize them,' said Dershowitz, the Washington Examiner reported. One example of this attempt to psychiatrize political differences is the asinine attempt by Bandy Lee to diagnose President Trump without ever having examined him in violation of APA medical ethics. See here.

The charge of mental incompetence is a major theme of a book by journalist Michael Wolff, 'Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,' that has consumed the news cycle since excerpts were released last Wednesday.

The White House has called the book, which also claims Trump didn’t want to win the election, 'trashy tabloid fiction' and pointed out that a number of subjects dispute quotes attributed to them, including a Trump friend and adviser quoted calling the president 'stupid.'

Wolff admitted Monday in an interview with 'CBS This Morning' that he did not interview Vice President Mike Pence or any Cabinet members, even though some of the most provocative claims in his book are credited to Cabinet members, the Daily Caller reported.

Dershowitz told 'Fox News on Sunday' the 'psychiatrists now who are trying to diagnose without ever having met the man, that’s what they did in Russia.'

'I represented dissidents who they locked up in mental hospitals,' he said. 'That’s what they did in China. That’s what they did in apartheid South Africa.'"

Precisely. In his work of critical importance entitled "Man Against Mass Society," the French philosopher Gabriel Marcel writes, "..the fanatic never sees himself as a fanatic; it is only the non-fanatic who can recognize him as a fanatic; so that when this judgment, or this accusation, is made, the fanatic can always say that he is misunderstood and slandered...Fanaticism is essentially opinion pushed to paroxysm; with everything that the notion of opinion may imply of blinded ignorance as to its own nature....whatever ends the fanatic is aiming at or thinks he is aiming at, even if he wishes to gather men together, he can only in fact separate them; but as his own interests cannot lie in effecting this separation, he is led, as we have seen, to wish to wipe his opponents out. And when he is thinking of these opponents, he takes care to form the most degrading images of them possible - they are 'lubricious vipers' or 'hyenas and jackals with typewriters' - and the ones that reduce them to most grossly material terms. In fact, he no longer thinks of these opponents except as material obstacles to be overturned or smashed down. Having abandoned the behaviour of a thinking being, he has lost even the feeblest notion of what a thinking being, outside himself, could be. It is understandable therefore that he should make every effort to deny in advance the rights and qualifications of those whom he wishes to eliminate; and that he should regard all means to this end as fair. We are back here again at the techniques of degradation. It cannot be asserted too strongly or repeated too often that those the Nazis made use of in their camps - techniques for degrading their victims in their own eyes, for making mud and filth of them - and those which Soviet propagandists use to discredit their adversaries, are not essentially different though we should, in fairness, add that sadism, properly so called, is not to be found in the Russian camps." (pp. 135-136, 149).

Marcel explains that, "In fact, the greatest merit of the critical spirit is that it tends to cure fanaticism, and it is logical enough that in our own fanatical times the critical spirit should tend to disappear, should no longer even be paid lip service as a value."

Leftists on Twitter celebrated the shooting of Representative Steve Scalise, a Republican from Louisiana. See here. I don't recall a long-distance diagnosis being issued by the quack-physician Bandy Lee.

It's no surprise that the Democratic left, the party of abortion (the ultimate violence committed against innocentchildren) is leaning increasingly toward violence. A "comedian" holds up the severed head of President Trump, a theater company in New York, holding a sick version of Julius Caesar, has a Trump lookalike murdered.

The violence we are witnessing across America is rooted in hatred of truth. Today there is a demand for sex without love, for a licentiousness in sex which has wrought a heartless society in which individuals do not care for anyone but themselves. The fruit of this demonic theology is the slaughter through abortion and euthanasia of human beings created in the Imago Dei. It is a theology of violence which is rooted in hatred of truth. For at the heart of immorality is falsity, the hatred of truth. Fr. Vincent P. Miceli, in an essay entitled "The Taproot of Violence," explains: "...violence entered creation from the rebellion of Lucifer. This rebellion arose from the heart of pride. But the sin of pride is the offspring of the vice known as hatred of truth. Hatred of truth is the result of the creature's attempt to rearrange God's hierarchy of beings and values into an order which the creature prefers to the plan of God. This attempt immediately produces the violence of disorder, the chaos of falsity and immorality. For hatred of truth is really hatred of God who creates all things wisely and governs them lovingly. Lucifer, the Morning Star, was instantly deformed into the Prince of Darkness because he attempted to live a lie. He wanted to dethrone God and become God himself..."

We live in an environment where there is a "violence of disorder" because we have abandoned truth. And hatred of truth leads to violence. It is the very root of violence. Jesus said to the Pharisees, "If God were your Father, you would love me, for I proceeded and came forth from God; I came not of my own account, but he sent me. Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word. You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies. But, because I tell the truth, you do not believe me." (John 8: 42-45).

It is rejection of truth which leads to violence. And so we read in verse 59 of the same Chapter, "So they took up stones to throw at him; but Jesus hid himself, and went out of the temple." If there is exaggerated rhetoric and violence across our society, it is because many have rejected God's created order. But there is a consequence to this rejection of truth. As Dorothy Sayers reminded us, if we will not have Christ, we will have chaos.

Links

About Me

Born in Bitburg, Germany,
Paul Melanson is a Catholic lay-philosopher and apologist whose work has appeared in many publications and websites including The Union Leader, The Wanderer, Seattle Catholic, Newsblaze, Helium, and Amazines. He has been interviewed by The National Catholic Register, the Southern Poverty Law Center and the television newsmagazine Chronicle.